The fast food industry in the United States, and elsewhere, has adopted fried chicken as one of its principle products. Prior to cooking the chicken, the chicken parts are breaded, i.e.. are coated with a batter which includes flour and various herbs and spices. The process of coating of the chicken parts with the batter includes several labor intensive strenuous steps, which are as follows:
First the chicken parts are placed in an initial flour tub, where the chicken is tumbled by hand in order to thoroughly coat the chicken with flour. The floured chicken parts are then placed in a Stainless steel mesh basket. The basket is lifted above the flour tub and the basket is shaken by hand. The purpose of the shaking is to remove any lose flour from the chicken. The flour which is shaken off the chicken is allowed to drop back into the flour tub.
Next the floured chicken is subjected a wet wash seasoning. The floured chicken parts are moved to a basket which then is emersed in a wet wash seasoning. The chicken parts are thus submerged in the wet wash seasoning. The basket is removed from the wet wash seasoning and allowed to drain.
Next the wet-washed chicken parts are placed in a second tub containing seasoned flour. The chicken parts are tumbled by hand to thoroughly coat the parts with seasoned flour. The coated chicken parts are then placed in a stainless steel mesh basket which is lifted above the seasoned flour tub and the basket is manually shaken to remove all lose flour from the chicken parts.
This completes the process of breading the chicken parts. After the breading process, the chicken parts are then moved to the cooking operation where the flour, wet wash, seasoned flour coated chicken is cooked to complete breading or batter on the chicken.
It has been found that in processing fried chicken, it is necessary to shake or tumble the chicken parts after they have been floured to eliminate excess flour, and, in particular to eliminate any build up of flour in the pockets and crevices of the chicken parts. For example, chicken wings tend to accumulate an undesirably large accumulation of flour in the interior portions of the joints. If the chicken is cooked with a large accumulation of flour, the accumulated flour forms a lump which does not completely cook and the chicken parts with such lumps are undesirable. Consequently it is essential that the excess flour in the pockets be removed by vigorously shaking the chicken before cooking.
Because chicken parts are processed in batches weighing as much as 15 pounds or more, it is necessary for the breading operator to be able to vigorously shake the entire batch of chicken in a wire mesh basket, while leaning over a tub of flour. This creates a substantial strain on the breading operator and sometimes results in injury to the breading operator.
In order to conserve both the initial flour and the seasoned flour supplies, the excess flour which is removed from the chicken during the shaking operation is allowed to drop back into the respective containers. However, the shaking operation also removes from the chicken, agglomerates of flour and water or agglomerates of flour and chicken bits which separate from the chicken during shaking. These agglomerates are referred to as "cracks". Because the cracks are relatively coarse, it is necessary that the cracks be removed from the flour before the flour is reused. The removal of the cracks requires the flour in the tubs to be sifted periodically. For the initial flour, the flour must be sifted after 20-30 batches of chicken have been floured. Because the seasoned flour contains salt and other seasoning ingredients, it is necessary to sieve the seasoned flour after every 5 to 8 batches of chicken. The sifting of the flour, as presently done, is a time consuming, labor intensive step.